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“Angry again? So quickly you flip back and forth. Fear. Anger. Fear. Anger. Is it not tiring?”
“The only thing I’m tired of is you busting up my house.”
The mischief in me awoke as I tilted my head ever so slightly. Satisfaction moved through me when I heard the sound of my horn once again on the wood and watched the disbelief widen her eyes. Any vestiges of her fear were gone as she hopped over the bed.
Her slipper hit me hard in the chest. If not for the sound, I wouldn’t have noticed at all. I was too enraptured by the look on her face. Determined. Fierce. Wondrous. That knot between her brow deepened as her jaw hardened, muscles flexing over bone. She struck me again, the look on her face coaxing a smile on mine.
“Don’t!” she barked.
“Don’t what? Stand here and allow you to attack me with your footwear?”
“Allow?” She sucked air through her teeth, the sound more vicious than her slipper. “You allow me to do nothing. I don’t need anyone’s permission to—”
“Strike them with footwear?” I interrupted, enjoying the way it irritated her. I tilted my head, scratching her ceiling again.
“You little…” Her cheeks puffed with kept breath as she tried to find the right word to stab me with. Her footwear wasn’t the only weapon in her arsenal. When she couldn’t find the right word she reached up and grabbed hold of my ear.
The pinch was stronger than I expected as I was yanked down into a crouch, her hold firm and unforgiving. She pulled my face close to hers as she stared into my eyes. She was menacing like this and it made me wonder just what she was capable of.
“Alright husband, I think it’s time we came up with some ground rules.”
20
EDEN
Ipaced my ruined living room knowing the anger inside me at the state of it wasn’t really about the living room. If I was still in therapy, I know my therapist would tell me this anger was misplaced. She’d ask me those questions that were meant to make me reflect and find the answer on my own in a way I appreciated when it was done but annoyed the fuck out of me when she was doing it.
Was I really upset that my living room was in chaos or was I upset that some weird boogeyman — boogeywoman, gender equality, hey! — had done some weird mind thing to me? Kidnapped me… in my own mind! I knew I had self-sabotaging thoughts, but this was just a whole new level.
There was nothing I could do about the boogeywoman, but there was a hell of a lot I could do about the state of my house, and I was damn sure not going to sit here and let this demon be a shitty husband, even if I wanted nothing to do with him.
“You’re going to clean all this shit up,” I demanded.
The muscles worked through Asmodeus’ jaw and he had the audacity to cut me a look but he slowly stood. “Yes.”
He was too damn big. My eyes could barely take him in. He was looming. His horns made him a foot taller than he was, and he was already so much taller than most men I’d seen.
“And no… demon skin or whatever this is.” I waved my hands between us, gesturing over him.
He pressed his hand to my collapsed coffee table. Flames ignited along his flesh, coating his hand before they doused slightly, transforming into a red mist. The mist coated the top of my table like a sinister fog before it thickened and pulled back, revealing my coffee table — good as new.
I was surprised. The demons I heard about had everything to do with destruction and mayhem. To see him using his devil embued powers to fix my coffee table was surreal.
“Are these your rules?” He waved a hand and a rope of fire whipped from the ends of his fingers. It cracked against my bookshelf and just as his hand had done to my coffee table, made it look like there hadn’t been a supernatural battle in here only hours before.
Cleaning up didn’t take him long at all. I was hoping he would begrudgingly have to take up a broom and all that cleanup would give me the time I needed to sort through my thoughts and come up with a plan better than running like hell into the nearest church and clinging to a priest like he was the last raft in a flood. If Asmodeus was telling the truth, and by his reactions to anything holy I could easily believe he was, a priest would do nothing to help me.
It was a shit plan.
And I didn’t have another.
Shit.
With my living room looking as it had before the witch’s fury and Asmodeus went at it, I slumped back into my chair and hung my head over the back. I stared up at my ceilings with their exposed beams and wondered what the hell I was going to do.
Becoming a hermit was the only thing that came to mind. I could cut all ties. Ice out the girls, Gran and Abuela to keep them safe and begrudgingly live with my demon husband in the woods until I died.
Well… not these woods. Those bitches knew where I lived and there was no way they would let me become a hermit in peace. They would likely invite themselves over after a day or two and put themselves in danger.
